I have an S3 and I love the screen, but I can see the PenTile. Doesn't bother me anymore, but it's still there. Definitely not trolling or looking too close at spec sheets. I thought I wouldn't notice it because everyone else said they couldn't, but I can for some reason. I don't have great eyes either. It's not as bad as some of the older PenTile displays though. I had the same problem with the HTC One S. I've compared the display directly to the lower res IPS display on my old phone, and I definitely can tell the difference. If I hold the S3 a couple inches further away than I normally do, I can't see the PenTile anymore.

Hmm, interesting. A few friends have SGS3's, a few have iPhone 5's, a few have HTC One X's, all seem pretty happy, no one really knocks the SGS3 on its screen aside from it not being bright enough in direct sunlight.

Hmm, interesting. A few friends have SGS3's, a few have iPhone 5's, a few have HTC One X's, all seem pretty happy, no one really knocks the SGS3 on its screen aside from it not being bright enough in direct sunlight.

*shrugs*

Maybe I need to compare to a Droid DNA or something.

Honestly don't see a hugely noticeable difference between my Note 2 and the S3's I've seen - but there is a pretty stark difference between my Note 2 and the OG Samsung Galaxy S Epic 4G I used to use.

my s3 has a few blotchy sections of screen that are blacker than the rest of the black screen when viewed in a pitch-dark room, like reading in bed after lights-out. very difficult to see, and they disappear in my blind spot when i look directly at them, but they're there. weird.

i can only see the pentile nature of this screen along longer, high-contrast horizontal edges. think the bottom of the gmail icon on a black background, for example, but not really, because it's really worst for colored icons rather than white ones. that said, it's difficult to see. this as a contrast to my last phone, an atrix, with a 4" qhd display, on which reading was frustrating - the pentile effect would randomly jump out at me and could not be unseen for hours. fuck.

It's a good screen, but stack it up against a non-Pentile screen at a similar size and resolution and you'll notice. It's more frustration at what could have been than serious problems.

Naa, I'll take the rare "I can identify that as pentile" thought over the washed out blacks of an LCD. Unless you have absurdly good vision or hold it right up in your face, the pentile pattern is not large enough to be an issue.

Quote:

my s3 has a few blotchy sections of screen that are blacker than the rest of the black screen when viewed in a pitch-dark room, like reading in bed after lights-out. very difficult to see, and they disappear in my blind spot when i look directly at them, but they're there. weird.

Naa, I'll take the rare "I can identify that as pentile" thought over the washed out blacks of an LCD. Unless you have absurdly good vision or hold it right up in your face, the pentile pattern is not large enough to be an issue.

I've used an iPhone 5 for a whole day (I forgot my phone at home, rented an iPhone 5 from work for the day), and really liked the display. But i couldn't tell the difference between the "retina display" and my S3's pentile display because i couldn't give two shits about it (or three, but who's keeping count?)

If one actually takes the time to look for the pentile pattern and actually make a point to state that they can see the pentile and think it's inferior to anything else out there, then that person really needs to get a real job and do something better with their lives.

It's a good screen, but stack it up against a non-Pentile screen at a similar size and resolution and you'll notice. It's more frustration at what could have been than serious problems.

Naa, I'll take the rare "I can identify that as pentile" thought over the washed out blacks of an LCD. Unless you have absurdly good vision or hold it right up in your face, the pentile pattern is not large enough to be an issue.

Quote:

my s3 has a few blotchy sections of screen that are blacker than the rest of the black screen when viewed in a pitch-dark room, like reading in bed after lights-out. very difficult to see, and they disappear in my blind spot when i look directly at them, but they're there. weird.

That's not normal.

It is normal from what I have read. Mine has one, but it is only visible if the screen isn't displaying something on that section.

Naa, I'll take the rare "I can identify that as pentile" thought over the washed out blacks of an LCD. Unless you have absurdly good vision or hold it right up in your face, the pentile pattern is not large enough to be an issue.

I've used an iPhone 5 for a whole day (I forgot my phone at home, rented an iPhone 5 from work for the day), and really liked the display. But i couldn't tell the difference between the "retina display" and my S3's pentile display because i couldn't give two shits about it (or three, but who's keeping count?)

If one actually takes the time to look for the pentile pattern and actually make a point to state that they can see the pentile and think it's inferior to anything else out there, then that person really needs to get a real job and do something better with their lives.

i disagree. i've never used an iphone 5, so i have no idea how it compares, but i'd love for my phone to have a pixel smoothness similar to my laserjet output...

but i'd love for my phone to have a pixel smoothness similar to my laserjet output...

Then you'd want to look at one of the new 5" 1920x1080 screens. I just used a Droid DNA today, and holy crap, it made the iPhone 5, SGS3, and Nexus 4's the rest of us have look.... well... not nearly as beautiful as the DNA's smoothness thanks to its insanely high PPI and an OS that knows how to handle it.

but i'd love for my phone to have a pixel smoothness similar to my laserjet output...

Then you'd want to look at one of the new 5" 1920x1080 screens. I just used a Droid DNA today, and holy crap, it made the iPhone 5, SGS3, and Nexus 4's the rest of us have look.... well... not nearly as beautiful as the DNA's smoothness thanks to its insanely high PPI and an OS that knows how to handle it.

but i'd love for my phone to have a pixel smoothness similar to my laserjet output...

Then you'd want to look at one of the new 5" 1920x1080 screens. I just used a Droid DNA today, and holy crap, it made the iPhone 5, SGS3, and Nexus 4's the rest of us have look.... well... not nearly as beautiful as the DNA's smoothness thanks to its insanely high PPI and an OS that knows how to handle it.

*drool*

Indeed. The DNA is one of the most impressive phones I've used. Can't wait for the Nexus 5 or whatever its going to be called.

Anyone have issues with the gmail app on the S3? I'm not receiving notifications using the gmail app, the generic email app is pulling my yahoo and hotmail emails fine. My settings for mail are ok because if I go in and manaully refresh it'll pull the emails in but I'm not getting push notifications. Any thoughts?

No issues with Gmail app here, but I only have two accounts coming in - and they're both Gmail.

Here's a left-field question: Before the 4.1 update, I had set my phone to rumble. That is, certain apps would use the vibrator to accentuate loud/bassy sounds. It was a fun gimmick, but I thought only a few apps would use it since there was a warning about support and such and such. Well, it turns out that almost every app that produces sound also causes* the rumble. I had meant to turn it off but didn't try to until a few days after getting 4.1 - and now I can't find the setting! Any ideas?

*I won't say "support," because I am a little skeptical of just how much of this is that devs' choice at the moment

On a different note, I think I may be seeing what everybody is complaining about RE: pentile display matrix or whatever it's called (brain farting right now, blame the potatoes). My colleague's Nexus One just died, so he finally upgraded to a GS3. Now, perhaps this is a hardware defect, but his screen has a screendoor effect oft found on really poor quality laptop LCD screens. You can very, very clearly see a minutely thin black line indicating the rows and columns of the pixels (or group of pixels?) in the screen. I'm not claiming to see exactly 1279 rows and 799 columns of black lines, but I would say that they are grouped enough that we're seeing about 200 rows and 50 columns of black lines.

Group vote: is the above a hardware defect? Or is that in fact the pentile grid? Googling images seems to point to it being a hardware defect, but I wanted to hear from others here if they think this is just the pentile screen.

This image compares Pentile to regular AMOLED. Pentile appears to have a "brick laying" grid, while the grid we're seeing has straight lines up/down, left/right.

Screendoor? Not on any of the SGS3's I've seen (and I have 2 or 3 in the house right now). Smells like a hardwware defect, especially if you can notice it at this kind of pixel density at a normal phone usage distance.

Looking up close I do notice it, but I'm not normally holding my phone 6" from my face either.

This issue is reported on some makes/models of "normal" RGB stripe LCD screens too, usually IPS panel models.

Four months in, I'm still as happy with the phone as I was after the initial period.

Very stable -- I've only had to reboot it once due to a system freeze, and I've very few app crashes or freezes as well.I got this Qmadix which besides doing a good job protecting the phone during several falls it's had, also goes a long way helping with the complaint I had re the physical buttons on the side -- with the case they gain a very positive, tactile feel.

Sunlight visibility is indeed weak sometimes, as expected -- when mounted on my motorcycle for satnav, I have to crank the screen to 100%.

Otherwise, the only issues have been app-related.

The native Email app stopped synchronizing accounts a few weeks ago with "connection error"; googling yielded that it's a common problem. After spending a couple hours futzing with various suggestions (clearing cache and/or data, removing and re-defining accounts, ebooting the phone etc.) it dawned on me: This being Android, there are a lot of alternatives to every app. I tried K9, and like it much better than the native app anyway.

Likewise, as the built-in search in S-Planner never worked for me, Aurora turned out to solve that, besides being more flexible than the native Google search for on-device stuff.

For anyone wanting to sync iTunes music from a Mac, the Samsung-sponsored "Easy Phone Sync" app turned out to be unreliable, refusing to sync tracks randomly, duplicating others and worst of all, mangling file permissions on the memory card causing access issues. iSyncr works much better.

Generally, app variety & choice is much better than I was led to expect (bought my first non-free app only a couple of days ago), as is the level of polish (although inter-app UI consistency isn't as good as in iOS). My local HMO, bank etc. all have good-quality apps that get updated regularly.

Now for the question:I'm still running the stock Samsung ICS 4.0.4 firmware for my country, unrooted; JB 4.1.2 was finally made available for local devices recently .Some of the new JB features (e.g., multi-window) sound nice, but I wouldn't want to upgrade at the expense of stability or battery life.

Can anyone comment on those latter two going from 4.0.4 to 4.1.2, preferably on the non-LTE Int'l GT-I9300 devices (since the North American devices use different a diff. CPU setup and LTE takes up more power than 3G / HSDPA, I expect they wouldn't be comparable)?

Can anyone comment on those latter two going from 4.0.4 to 4.1.2, preferably on the non-LTE Int'l GT-I9300 devices (since the North American devices use different a diff. CPU setup and LTE takes up more power than 3G / HSDPA, I expect they wouldn't be comparable)?

My colleague worried about the same thing, but since upgrading to 4.1.2 he has not had any complaints about either battery life or stability.

YMMV, but so far I haven't seen many complaints about stability with the new upgrade. Battery life is always a mixed bag, given all kinds of factors like LTE, signal strength, background apps, etc..

i upgraded my i9300 to JB as soon as the Polish ROM came out, no issues with batt-life or stability. The multi-window mode was useless for me, about the only headline feature I used was the ability to customize the notification widgets.

Thanks asbath & r8dhex,Sounds good... Looks like I'll make the plunge in a couple of days, unless I hear of issues from the local community.

Incidentally, I reinstalled the Mac Kies version to do the firmware upgrade, and while it's a bit prettier, it works worse than ever. It takes several minutes to recognize & connect to the phone, and then a simple backup runs hours and then the app freezes in the middle.

Anyone want to recommend a backup/restore utility unrooted devices? Something that restores the entire device to as close a state as possible as it was just before the backup.I'll probably root eventually just to use Titanium Backup, but not yet.

OT: asbath, say high to Vancouver for me... Lived there for a couple of years many years ago (UBC area).

Now for the question:I'm still running the stock Samsung ICS 4.0.4 firmware for my country, unrooted; JB 4.1.2 was finally made available for local devices recently .Some of the new JB features (e.g., multi-window) sound nice, but I wouldn't want to upgrade at the expense of stability or battery life.

Can anyone comment on those latter two going from 4.0.4 to 4.1.2, preferably on the non-LTE Int'l GT-I9300 devices (since the North American devices use different a diff. CPU setup and LTE takes up more power than 3G / HSDPA, I expect they wouldn't be comparable)?

Haven't had a problem with the official ROMs themselves, although I have had some issues with faulty apps wreacking havoc. I once managed to download something (and I never found out what it was, either) that caused the phone to spontaneously re-boot every few hours. A factory reset fixed it, and it's been fine since. Mainly, what kills your battery life is widgets. The more you have, constantly sipping at the antennae for data, the worse your battery life will be. Currently, I only have Flipboard and a weather widget, and my battery life would be around the 30-hour mark if I didn't charge it when I go to bed at night.

Thanks asbath & r8dhex,Sounds good... Looks like I'll make the plunge in a couple of days, unless I hear of issues from the local community.

Incidentally, I reinstalled the Mac Kies version to do the firmware upgrade, and while it's a bit prettier, it works worse than ever. It takes several minutes to recognize & connect to the phone, and then a simple backup runs hours and then the app freezes in the middle.

Anyone want to recommend a backup/restore utility unrooted devices? Something that restores the entire device to as close a state as possible as it was just before the backup.I'll probably root eventually just to use Titanium Backup, but not yet.

OT: asbath, say high to Vancouver for me... Lived there for a couple of years many years ago (UBC area).

It's pretty difficult to find a proper backup utility that doesn't require root. Of course the best method of backing up the entire device is either Kies (or other manufacturers' variants) and NANdroid backups.

A quick Google scan results in some people mentioning that you can use ADB to backup your device without root, but no mention of whether or not you must be on a non-TouchWiz ROM. (e.g. http://tips4droid.com/how-to-take-full- ... S-KpTu229k). As I'm using a custom ROM that is based off of CM10.1, using ADB is a matter of a checkbox in the Settings app. I can't say the same for TW, as I just don't remember.

I believe that the Kies backup is more akin to a complete system image, while the Titanium Backup is really just apps and their data. Titanium Backup will not backup or restore things like the kernel or other lower level components, but is more than enough to restore apps after a factory reset, etc.

***Yeah it's raining here, but only a little. And as you already know, everybody complains about it (but boasts to the rest of the world that we have it). I don't mind much, born and raised and expect nothing less of it

It's pretty difficult to find a proper backup utility that doesn't require root. Of course the best method of backing up the entire device is either Kies (or other manufacturers' variants) and NANdroid backups.

Not anymore, try Carbon (not the twitter client) by the same guy that makes Clockworkmod. It's a great backup tool, no root needed. You can backup just app data or apps and data.

It's pretty difficult to find a proper backup utility that doesn't require root. Of course the best method of backing up the entire device is either Kies (or other manufacturers' variants) and NANdroid backups.

Not anymore, try Carbon (not the twitter client) by the same guy that makes Clockworkmod. It's a great backup tool, no root needed. You can backup just app data or apps and data.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I meant it's pretty hard to find a full backup utility that will create a system image without root or recovery. With just root, you can do a nandroid from Terminal, and with recovery you have the traditional NANdroid backup.

Anyone flashed a 4.2.2 based ROM and if so which? CM has 10.1-M2 available and I've also been looking at Paranoidkangdroid, the latter seems to have very positive reviews but CM still has people complaining about bluetooth issues.

Anyone flashed a 4.2.2 based ROM and if so which? CM has 10.1-M2 available and I've also been looking at Paranoidkangdroid, the latter seems to have very positive reviews but CM still has people complaining about bluetooth issues.

Just looking for opinions before I flash.

I'm currently on PKA 2.10

No problems with it thus far - however, I don't use Bluetooth for stuff like phone calls or streaming music so I cannot comment on that. Occasionally I use BT to tether to a laptop, and that works very well. Everything else, however, works perfectly. Wifi tethering is fixed, so I'm all set.

The only thing that I don't like about 4.2.2 so far is the new lockscreen - previous CM10 let you specify if you wanted to have lockscreen shortcuts (like slider) on top of the PIN lockscreen. Not anymore - if you have a PIN set (e.g. if you have Activesync/Exchange), you don't get shortcuts anymore (or at least I haven't found a way to bring back the slider/shortcuts on top of the PIN interface).

Anyone flashed a 4.2.2 based ROM and if so which? CM has 10.1-M2 available and I've also been looking at Paranoidkangdroid, the latter seems to have very positive reviews but CM still has people complaining about bluetooth issues.

Just looking for opinions before I flash.

I'm currently on PKA 2.10

No problems with it thus far - however, I don't use Bluetooth for stuff like phone calls or streaming music so I cannot comment on that. Occasionally I use BT to tether to a laptop, and that works very well. Everything else, however, works perfectly. Wifi tethering is fixed, so I'm all set.

The only thing that I don't like about 4.2.2 so far is the new lockscreen - previous CM10 let you specify if you wanted to have lockscreen shortcuts (like slider) on top of the PIN lockscreen. Not anymore - if you have a PIN set (e.g. if you have Activesync/Exchange), you don't get shortcuts anymore (or at least I haven't found a way to bring back the slider/shortcuts on top of the PIN interface).

Cool, thanks for that. By chance do you have any way to test BT audio?

From what I'm reading the issue is that it doesn't like to connect to another device when streaming BT. If your able to stream audio from your phone to the laptop that would seem like a reasonable check on the problem, yeah?

From what I'm reading the issue is that it doesn't like to connect to another device when streaming BT. If your able to stream audio from your phone to the laptop that would seem like a reasonable check on the problem, yeah?

Yeah, I just tested it right now. I'm able to stream music from Apolo and a podcast from Pocket Casts to my laptop.

I think the BT issue was actually one that is an issue within CM10.1, but was supposedly fixed in the more recent updates. I know for sure that some people were complaining about it earlier, but more recently people have said that it's been fixed and hasn't been a problem since

Update:Sammobile has since added more info from its source, advising that these are shots from another ROM, intended for the GS III, but still insists its intel confirms these features are coming.

I have to say I'm surprised at this, as Samsung are usually pretty bad at updating older models. Of course, this isn't set in stone, and there's no timeframe for such updates, so I wouldn't hold your breath. I'd hope they'd be baked into a 4.2 update.

From what I'm reading the issue is that it doesn't like to connect to another device when streaming BT. If your able to stream audio from your phone to the laptop that would seem like a reasonable check on the problem, yeah?

Yeah, I just tested it right now. I'm able to stream music from Apolo and a podcast from Pocket Casts to my laptop.

I think the BT issue was actually one that is an issue within CM10.1, but was supposedly fixed in the more recent updates. I know for sure that some people were complaining about it earlier, but more recently people have said that it's been fixed and hasn't been a problem since

Thanks for checking, I flashed PKD yesterday. First impressions, after I set max clock to 1100MHz, is that the battery life is amazing. I really don't notice the decreased performance at all either. Still playing around with all the options, and there are a bunch! Also I have to say that Carbon backup is awesome, all my apps are right back where I had them prior to the flash.

Thanks for checking, I flashed PKD yesterday. First impressions, after I set max clock to 1100MHz, is that the battery life is amazing. I really don't notice the decreased performance at all either. Still playing around with all the options, and there are a bunch! Also I have to say that Carbon backup is awesome, all my apps are right back where I had them prior to the flash.

If you use an app like betterbatterystats you can dump the raw time spent at each CPU clock. Under normal usage your phone should be spending most of its onscreen time clocked quite low, probably well under 1 GHz. If capping your clock speed at 1.1GHz has a large impact on battery life, it suggests that something was forcing the CPU clock to stay high when it should not have.

Yeah PKD is pretty good, and really very flexible. Has lots of features I don't need but can appreciate having it, and lots of features that I use all the time. It doesn't quite have that refinement that a OEM would have put into their ROMs (e.g. Blur or TW) but it has enough features from AOKP and CM 10.1 to make it much more worthwhile.

I don't underclock as much as you, but I do keep it at 1242mhz max to keep foreground applications in check. Otherwise I'm pretty happy with the battery life. I can make it through a whole day on a single charge if I'm relatively conservative, but I tend to charge up sometime after lunch to make sure that I have enough battery to make it through anything else that pops up.

Thanks for checking, I flashed PKD yesterday. First impressions, after I set max clock to 1100MHz, is that the battery life is amazing. I really don't notice the decreased performance at all either. Still playing around with all the options, and there are a bunch! Also I have to say that Carbon backup is awesome, all my apps are right back where I had them prior to the flash.

If you use an app like betterbatterystats you can dump the raw time spent at each CPU clock. Under normal usage your phone should be spending most of its onscreen time clocked quite low, probably well under 1 GHz. If capping your clock speed at 1.1GHz has a large impact on battery life, it suggests that something was forcing the CPU clock to stay high when it should not have.

I always used CPU throttling when I run TW so I simply backed the clocks max down from the stock PKD 2GHz! I wont put any weight in battery life for at least a week after switching ROMs, even with the low max CPU the phone still hums along just fine!